Lab

Backburner + eyeon Fusion

Autodesk Backburner is a nice choice for small render farms. It can be used not only from 3dsmax or Maya but also handle renderings from other app. Like eyeon Fusion…

It comes with CMDJOB app. Run it with -? parameters.
Here is what we got:

 

As from above help, cmdjob can be splitted in to 3 parts:
CMDJOB <options> executable_to_run <executable parameters>

 

So first let’s try create some job to render only on local machine: 
cmdjob -jobName “Fusion Render” -jobNameAdjust -manager deko-render 

“C:Program FileseyeonFusion 6.1Fusion.exe” 

“E:IR_BelieveDFbelieve_04.comp” /render /start 0 /end 100 /quit

*manager hostname can be used instead of IP.

 

1. The first part is CMDJOB options.
For net rendering is best to show where your manager on network is.  -manager 192.168.1.100 -netmask 255.255.0.0 -port 3234

 

2. Second is path to your rendering application (iin our example – eyeon fusion)

 

3. Last part is needed params to render app. To know what parameters is needed, run application with /? 

 

What Fusion show to us:

 

We have options to write needed frame range, if not specified it will be picked from composition.

 

PROBLEMS:
With this method Backburner don’t create tasklist, like usually splitting every frame in to separate task:
Tasklist
SOLUTIONS:
P.S. if you render on one machine this isn’t a big problem, except that you can’t view Job progress in Backburner Monitor.

 

So, how to render Fusion Job on network slaves with Backburner:
a) Configure Fusion Render Manager:
Then easily add others fusion renderslaves by: /join <host>
b) Split entire frame range in to a couple of Jobs. As example if you have 3 network slaves and 1000 frames to render, create 3 jobs for each slave to render 1/3 framerange.
c) Split every frame as separated tasks (not recommending, IMHO)
cmdjob -jobName “Fusion” -jobNameAdjust -manager deko-render -priority 50 -numTasks 1000 -tp_start 0 “C:Program FileseyeonFusion 6.1Fusion.exe” “E:IR_BelieveDFbelieve_04.comp” /render /frames %4tn /quit
I’m not recommending to use this method, because Fusion will reload project for every created task. And if you have 1000 frames it will waste a lot of time just reloading app for each frame.

 

See also
d) TASKLIST.TXT
Use external tasklist.txt file. Example:
cmdjob -jobName “Fusion” -jobNameAdjust -manager deko-render -tasklist “C:tasklist.txt” -taskname 1 “C:Program FileseyeonFusion 6.1Fusion.exe” “E:IR_BelieveDFbelieve_04.comp” /render /start %tp2 /end %tp3 /quit
%tp2 and %tp3 are column index from tasklist.txt file.
tasklist.txt example:
part1 000 100
part2 101 300
part3 301 400
part4 401 500
first column is a just taskname, second – start frame, the last – end frame.

 

Below you can download these examples.

 

After Effects example:

 

So, by using CMDJOB app you can send to Backburner any project from Fusion, After Effects, Terragen, Vue or any other app that have command-line interface.
Happy rendering 😉